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Friday, November 12, 2010

I'm Fried

I was going to call this post "4th of July Hailstorm, Part 2" or maybe "Roofing the Barn", but frankly, I'm fried. The roofers were supposed to be replacing the barn roof today as part of the aftermath of the hailstorm. We moved Paj and Reggie down to Chuck's barn yesterday, and Bob took Boomer to a friend's. If you have horses, you know that this is not trivial. We moved blankets, hay, shavings, water buckets, etc. And we worried. Paj tends to quit drinking when he thinks he's stressed, and Reggie likes to squeal and stomp at strange horses. Our barn is heavily insulated and stays pretty warm, and it was 18 degrees last night. Not exactly when you want to be moving horses, especially one that has had more than one dehydration colic in spite of water everywhere and salty brans. The good news is that both horses are doing fine down at Chuck's. Paj, my social butterfly, is busy making new friends, and all systems seem to be working fine. Reggie is stomping and squealing a bit, but he's really being very good. And since we've been taking care of Chuck's horses anyway, having them all in one place is working out nicely.

So here comes the fried part. We have/had a very narrow window for roofing the barn. We are between snowstorms. It's supposed to start snowing again around noon tomorrow. The roofers showed up hours late (around noon) today, discovered they didn't have an important part of the roof, and left. They have to drive to Ft. Collins (108 miles one way) to get it. Grrrrr.

I started stripping the stalls yesterday and finished this morning. I did this because I was worried they'd drop a screw or insulation into the stalls, and a horse would eat it. With the floors bare, I could just sweep up whatever they dropped. Here is about half of what I took out of Paj's stall alone -

So you can see where I'm not real keen on bedding the stalls, bringing the horses home, taking the horses back to Chuck's in the morning and stripping stalls again. On the plus side, I am really pleased that my shoulder held up well. I also covered the waterers, took stuff off the walls, etc, but that's minor. I want my barn roofed. I want my horses healthy and happy and home.

I would be fried, frazzled and just plain pooped after doing all that. I hope your repairmen show up early with extra help, before another snow! I would be worried too about a screw or staple getting in the horses stuff!

How long do you expect them to take on the roof? We have some pretty big barns and they did them in a couple of days. Hopefully things will be back to normal soon and you can rest your shoulder. Do you blanket your horses when it is that cold?